


Querencia

by xuhei



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Demon AU, F/M, I guess thats really it, I liked how this turned out, I'm such a hoe for demons and he's an ASSASSIN demon!!, Lovely stuff, Medieval AU, also I guess this is a, and wonho is wonho, but yeah, hyungwon is... a questionable character, kihyun is being my ultimate fave character ever in this, kinda too, shownu is a sweet demon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 05:19:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13069965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xuhei/pseuds/xuhei
Summary: Querencia - (n.) a place from one’s strength is drawn and where one feels at home; where the bull is naturally drawn to in the ring“I thought you were annoying at first, and that you wanted revenge on an ex who also thought you were annoying. But now I see you are so much more than that, and you’ve taught me so much about everything. I look at you and my heart beats so quickly that I fear it may explode. I want to stay here with you forever. Does that sound like I’m in love with you?”





	Querencia

**Author's Note:**

> THE ---- BETWEEN BITS WAS MEANT TO BE FOUR MOON EMOJIS AND IM SO MAD BC THIS THING GLITCHES WHEN YOU USE EMOJISIDWQPEIF pls forgive the lack of aesthetic

The internet is not the place to be looking for decent ways to get revenge on your boyfriend.

No, no, he was your ex-boyfriend now.

But yes, you were looking for a better than average way to get revenge on him because you were totally filling that role of god-awful, jealous and overall bitter ex-girlfriend that no one really wants to actually fill. Call it karma, call it whatever, but you were annoyed that no justice had been served.

“That’s for cheating on me,” you mutter, throwing in a flower that you couldn’t quite recall the name of, into a bowl that you weren’t sure was going to help you at all. You pick up bundle of herbs this time, throwing those in too. “That’s for saying this was all my fault.”

Don’t get me wrong, Hyungwon was a nice guy.

Chae Hyungwon, an absolute sweetheart to everyone, knew how to treat people terrifically.

You’d met him in college, when you were in your second year and starting to actually take your studies seriously. He was always in the library and after weeks of debating whether or not he was actually looking at you or not, you got the courage to sit across from him. That ended in the two of you exchanging numbers and thus began a blossoming relationship that you would have carried on forever and ever.

If he hadn’t been going behind your back for the latter part of the relationship.

“Goddammit Chae Hyungwon. Why are you always ruining my life.” The words you say come at the cost of an exaggerated sigh as the memories of him start flooding right back to you. “I love you so much, you mean the world to me. Choke on a dick. Oh wait, you already did.”

He didn’t. Hyungwon had been with some other girl. When you had confronted him about what the fuck he’d been doing with her, he said they met at a party one night. One he told you he didn’t go to, which of course was another lie you’d have seen through if you weren’t so infatuated by him.

God knows what he did at those parties. For all you knew, he did choke on a dick. Minhyuk was ninety per cent sure Hyungwon was into guys too when they first met, so it seemed likely.

Chae Hyungwon was someone who looked like a god in his own right though. No wonder people were so attracted to him when he sported those gorgeous lips and breathtaking eyes. You could stare at his face for days. You would have stared at him for eternity if he wasn’t such an asshole.

You’re lying. You’d have stared at him for days even if he was an asshole. He was that beautiful.

So, your solution to your problem with Hyungwon was to curse him. After four hours on the internet and a further three on Pinterest—it would have been one, but being distracted by the HD pics of Jeon Wonwoo and Kim Mingyu together prolonged the experience—you’d found something to destroy him with.

Hopefully he wouldn’t die.

“If only I was a sweet as that girl you left me for, Hyungwon. You wouldn’t have to deal with this shit for eternity,” you utter under your breath, something very common nowadays. Another candle is lit up at your table and you smile to yourself. “I’m not good enough for you? Let’s see how good I am for you when no one else wants you. Good for nothing prick.”

That was a little harsh.

\----

After three days of nothing happening, you give up thinking that Hyungwon is actually going to get repercussions from your plan of revenge.

Okay, some of the effects weren’t immediate but you had asked for people to not find him attractive anymore. Nothing has yet been posted on your Facebook or Snapchat of a hairless, weird looking monster running through the streets of Seoul. Hyungwon hadn’t gone on some rant about it either, and Minhyuk had strategically captured one of Hyungwon’s stories from yesterday morning where he looked perfectly fine.

Since he blocked you on there. What an ass.

So you decide to distract yourself, opting to start the morning with a shower that’s accompanied by the loudest of speakers you could possibly find (Changkyun had bought you some great ones for your birthday) in an attempt to just forget. You have no work, it’s a Sunday morning and you have no reason to be complaining anymore. Just because Hyungwon pissed you off, doesn’t mean you have to stay pissed off for the rest of eternity. You’re sure that was what he wanted anyway.

An hour of Seventeen’s music playing deafeningly loud through your bathroom, as well as the left over candles from Thursday night and trained thoughts of everything Kim Mingyu could do to you, and you’re completely refreshed.

Of course it would have been better if Minhyuk hadn’t been texting you the entire time and interrupting their amazing voices, but lest you complain. The boy was making sure you were okay. Which you very much were, especially now you’d rinsed the last of Chae Hyungwon away from you and were ready to start afresh with someone twice as hot as he was.

As it seems, you’ll be starting afresh far sooner than expected.

“Fuck,” you curse under your breath. “Fuck. Fuck. I thought I locked the door. What the fuck.”

The progressively worsening swearing is in reference to the blonde haired man sitting in your main room with his dirty hands moving all over the pictures of you in one of your photo albums. You definitely locked the door. You weren’t an idiot. He must be crazy.

You first thought is to remember the safety techniques that Hyungwon had taught you. Call him whenever you’re in danger, he said that the first time he took you on a date. Ugh, like you needed him right now, but you were shit scared and even as you reach for your phone the first number you dial is Hyungwon. So much for deleting his number.

God knows Minhyuk can’t help you in a situation like this one. He’s got no physical strength.

Nor does Hyungwon now you think about it.

The phone still rings and you never attempt to cut it off, and you’re losing hope. Especially when the call fails and you’re left looking at a lockscreen picture of… you and Hyungwon. You’re never going to escape him.

Either way, you’re stuck in here with some crazy guy who probably wants you for something other than your photo album, and you’ve got to think up some way to escape from him. On the thirteenth floor of an apartment complex. With the only means of escaping coming after you’ve met him.

Think; think. You’ve watched a tonne of movies before. Realistically speaking this shouldn’t be too difficult but the guy looks tough. His shoulders a wide and his arms are very much toned. You can see that through his sleeveless vest, one that clearly shows his arms that are veiny for days. Bodybuilder type. You should definitely not try and run from him.

Unless he skipped leg day, then you might make it. But judging by the overall look of this man you’re not going anywhere if he can still catch you.

“As long as I don’t kill him, I’m fine,” you say to yourself, keeping your voice hushed as you step out into the hallway and hold your towel a little tighter around your body. This is the most compromising position ever to be in. Your racing heart is the next biggest fault.

Your plan? The kitchen. You’d get the saucepan you always forget to put away and whack him with it. Just so he’s out cold on your sofa and you can run to a neighbours and get them to call the police. Jooheon and Changkyun were only on the floor below, you could probably get there with no trouble. If it would work, that is. He could have superhuman strength.

Clearly, you thought too soon.

The plan is working, just up until you’re behind him with the frying pan clutched in your hands like it’s your final lifeline. He must be tone deaf or really interested in photos not to have noticed you yet. You count yourself down anyway, starting at three and then restarting after you get to two to buy you more time. This has to work. Three. Two.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

He’d gotten to one at the exact same time as you.

You’re struck for a moment because he turns back to you and Jesus Christ. He is more beautiful than Hyungwon. That ice white hair over his eyes is so distracting, and the way he stares too. He’s got pinkish red lips that, although so different to Hyungwon’s, would have definitely stopped you on the street. He has the face of a…

A God. He’s ethereal, despite the disparities in his physical body.

“You shouldn’t be hitting guests in your home! That’s rude. Weren’t you ever told that you should be kind to strangers and treat them with respect? And I’m older than you! Yah, apologise to me!”

Hell fucking no.

You bolt it before he can say another word, the first place coming to mind being Minhyuk’s bedroom. A step above your own, and he’s likely to have a pile of clothes you can hide under because he never clears up after himself.

It doesn’t even occur to you that the man might follow you until you hear his voice again. “Really? You’re running? We need to talk!”

He’s loud and overbearing but strangely, it draws you to him. What kind of strange training has he been through to get to this point? He is actually insane.

Insane enough to go straight to Minhyuk’s room first and find you before you even make it to Minhyuk’s pile of clothes in the corner.

“What are you doing?”

You don’t answer. You just stand there and stare at him in an attempt to wake up from whatever dream this is.

No one in the area had been kidnapped recently. Of course you’d be the first victim of a handsome, tall and bodybuilding individual that talked like a kid. He had to be some kind of organised criminal because he would blend in with the more attractive part of society without fail. He probably had good friends and an apartment in town too and now you were going to be living there too against your will.

“I asked you a question, sweetheart.”

“What are you doing?” You question in return. Somewhere you’d read that kidnappers prefer innocence. If you fight back he might fuck off. “Why are you here? What do you want with me?”

The man only frowns. “You invited me here.”

“I don’t even know who you are!”

“Well… I’m Wonho. Who are you?”

Your turn to frown now. “I didn’t ask who you were.”

“You said you didn’t know who I was so I told you…? Damn, you humans are so confusing. Listen, you invited me here. Something about that boy. Hyungwon? You wanted revenge on him and I’m here to help you.”

“What?”

Wonho, as you now know him to be, doesn’t seem so please but your monosyllabic response. He narrows his eyes at you and purses his lips. “Are you unable to recall what you did on Thursday night?”

“Thursday?” You repeat, furrowing your brows. You’re still thinking over his previous statement where he referred to humans as if he wasn’t one himself. Playing the dumb card may be a risk. “I was at work. That’s what happened Thursday.”

“You weren’t the one who asked for help with revenge on Chae Hyungwon?” Wonho asks this time.

You shake your head.

“Are you not (y/n)?”

Another shake of your head. He had a really nice voice.

“Then you’re… Lee Minhyuk?”

“Uh… No,” you answer him this time. He seems just as confused as you are now. “Look, what are you here for? I’m not here to play around, if you want money or my phone, take it.”

Wonho rolls his eyes. “You think I’m here to take your possessions? Are you stupid?”

“I’ll tell you if I’m stupid if you tell me why you’re here.”

“I don’t make deals with humans,” Wonho says. He scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest and slouching onto his left leg. “I’m here because I was summoned, if you’re curious. As soon as I find she by the name of (y/n) who wishes for me to deal with the problem of Chae Hyungwon, I can leave. So you better find her quick. I can leave you alone, afterwards.”

Maybe he’s not as smart as you made out. His references to humans make you question on whether he is truly crazy and you need to just try to calmly talk to him. Crazy, or he’s something unusual that you brought to life with those things you tried.

Holy shit, you’ve summoned a spirit. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Jooheon would laugh in your face if he ever heard you say that out loud. It’s impossible. You couldn’t have summoned a spirit because you’d put your cross on the side behind you.

Right?

“Hypothetically speaking, what would you do to Hyungwon if the girl you were looking for was found?” You ask Wonho.

He narrows his eyes again. “I’m not sure I should discuss this with you.”

“I said hypothetically.”

“Well, I would offer my services to take revenge on this boy in whatever way would deem fit,” Wonho tells you. He shrugs, but you take into account that he hasn’t looked down at your body once this whole time. Maybe he’s not going to kidnap you and this is the truth. “For a price, of course. My best service is death, so I would ask that anyone who requires me to kill another repays with their best service, too.”

Your brow is raised again. “Do you decide what the best service an individual can offer is?”

“Sweetheart. I know everything about everyone when I see them, apart from mortal things such as names and ages. Do you think I would pertain to such standards at my level of ranking? In my natural form, everyone knows who I am.”

If only you could say what again, this time with more exaggeration on what the fuck he is on about because none of it makes bloody sense.

“Your natural form?”

“Oh, I forgot.” Wonho shakes his hair and it falls a little flatter over his face. He runs his fingers over it and sighs. “Look, if you tell me you’re (y/n) I will explain everything. I can’t help you if I’m stuck here trying to tell you that I’m only here to help.”

“If you know everything then why can’t you just know who I am. I already told you I’m not stupid.”

“And I told you I wasn’t aware of names. Come on, I don’t have all day here. I have to be invited in to your household and life so I can help you.”

Touché.

Either way, you’re not quite sure what to say to Wonho. He’s a little confusing and you want it straight from him what he is, as well as knowing what the hell he’s capable of. “So you’ll kill Chae Hyungwon if you’re asked to?”

“I can. Or I can make him wish he was dead. Anything, really. I have a lot of power,” Wonho answers sweetly. “I’ve done this for a very long time and my services will not fail you. I can promise you the least.”

“Yeah but… when you say you’ll make Hyungwon wish he was dead, what does that entail?”

Wonho shrugs. “If you have a particular request, I can make it happen. Mostly I like to play around a bit but I can change things for you. Are there any other questions or are you done yet?”

Now you had a million questions running through your mind but you’d resist saying anything because Wonho, admittedly, did kind of scare you. He was beefy and he was a murderer. He won’t kill you but he has the power to do whatever you say and that gives you a lot of power too.

And people go crazy with power. You know that very well.

So you shake your head. “No, I don’t need to ask anything else. “

“Oh, that’s good!” Wonho says to you. His tone is light and energetic and it makes you think that he has some kind of split personality. “Well, you better pick what you want me to do with Chae Hyungwon, (y/n). I’ll be waiting.”

He is as smart as you thought he was to begin with.

\----

After a long day at work—a stressful one at that—you’d decided that the very last thing you needed was to debate whether or not you wanted Hyungwon to die.

Or wish he was dead, whatever.

However, the very first thing you’d seen when you’d walked through the door was Wonho sitting on your couch with that god awful smile on his face. It was by no means a bad smile, it was just beautiful and every time you thought of beauty it took you straight back to Hyungwon and you really did not need that.

Actually, you weren’t sure if Hyungwon was still the prettiest being alive. Wonho was just… imagine seeing something so rare that you’re drawn to it from miles. It’s one of a kind and you know that if you don’t look at that very precise time you’ll miss it as never get a chance to see it again. Ignore the slight objectification. Wonho is just the most beautiful thing to ever exist.

Since he’s not actually a human, so thing will have to do.

“Hi!” He greets you, his personality different to what it was like yesterday. He seemed more joyous and ready to kill. “How was your day?”

“It was okay,” you answer him with a similar smile.

Despite what you expected him to say—something along the lines of will I be harvesting Chae Hyungwon’s soul tomorrow morning—Wonho frowns. “Did I not tell you yesterday that I know everything? Come on. I know your day wasn’t just okay.”

“It was a normal day at work, really.”

“And where do you work?” Wonho asks you.

“I work in the cafe just around the corner,” you tell him. It’s a little cliche but the manager was nice and paid you well. More than Jooheon, not that he knew. “Some guy lost his marbles because his coffee was too hot. My friend Jooheon doesn’t understand what rare, medium and well done steaks are and I get the blame for it. The usual.”

Wonho raises his eyebrow. He had the slightest of smirks on his lips that you’re attracted to as he speaks. So worthy of kissing. “Jooheon? Is he your boyfriend?”

“Oh, god no. I’m not dating anyone.”

“Oh, right.” Wonho appears to make a mental note of what you’re saying and nods knowingly. “You’re not dating anyone since you broke up with Hyungwon. Gotcha.”

You’d really never consider dating any of the people you were friends with. Jooheon, Changkyun and Minhyuk were very different and all were dateable, but none of them were Hyungwon.

Minhyuk was the epitome of perfect boyfriend. He was easily attached and had a heart of gold ready for anyone willing to accept. You were sure he’d one day find his perfect girl but he was too loud for you. After being his friend for years now and sharing an apartment with him for a year and a bit now, his bad habits were too much.

Not to mention he was far too extra and liked to be busy all the damn time, whereas you did enjoy mornings in bed. Just like Hyungwon.

Jooheon was also an amazing person, but working with him meant it would never, ever work out. He was nice and he made sure there was always a good song playing in the kitchen but that was not something you deemed necessary in a boy. Though you’d admit you had a little crush on him at first he was too much for you now.

And Lim Changkyun.

He was just… not for you.

“About Hyungwon,” you say, placing down your bag on the table. “I’ve decided that I won’t be doing anything to him. I just want to leave him alone.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Wonho doesn’t look mad. No, he looks the same as he did before and that’s basically unreadable. Not that you’re complaining; it’s a free pass to watch his face and as you’ve recently found out, staring at Wonho is a rather fun activity.

For someone so eager to take a life last night, he looks fine. “Well, if you’re not going to use me to hurt Hyungwon then you should think up some other use for me.”

“Like what?” You return.

“Like… ask me to ruin someone else’s life instead?” Wonho suggests. He shrugs his shoulders and then places his hands on his thighs that you have to take an extra long glance at. “I’m bound to you until I do something for you, so make the most of me. No crazy boss you need to take revenge on or anything?”

You shake your head. “You mistake me for someone who likes hurting people.”

“You did summon a demon to take revenge on your ex-boyfriend. I’m only making an assumption.”

Touché, Wonho.

You have nothing you need him for, really. Apart from the Hyungwon situation there was nothing else you particularly needed to avenge. Not that you thought Hyungwon deserved it, anyway.

And anyway, Wonho has to stick around until you’ve used him for something. You’re sure you’d eventually have something he can do, but for the meantime you’ll enjoy having him around.

He is art, after all.

“What did he do, anyway?”

You raise an eyebrow at Wonho’s question. “Hyungwon?”

“Yeah. You sounded pissed rather than angry. Did he dump you or something?”

“He was sleeping with some other girls behind my back,” you tell Wonho. Saying out loud sounded stupid. You sounded like a petty ex that couldn’t accept they weren’t good enough. “It’s pointless, I know. I overreacted.”

Wonho shakes his head. He stands up and cocks his head to the side, eyebrows still furrowed. “No, I don’t think you overreacted. I think you were hurt he would treat you with no respect.”

When it was put that way, your case was far more justified. Wonho doesn’t seem to pity you like others might have done (if you were as honest with them as you were with Wonho, of course). It warms your heart a little.

“Something like that, yeah.”

“And I bet you don’t want to do anything to him because you still love him,” Wonho says. Still emotionless like always. If he wasn’t pretty it would annoy you more. “Maybe you should speak to him. Tie any loose ends and get some closure. If you meet him and he’s still a dick to you, then you can use me to make sure he never can treat someone the same way again.”

Your eyes automatically drift to one of the pictures of the two of you that you’ve left on the side. Something tells you that Wonho is looking, too. “Do you think that will work?”

“It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”

You hum. The only thing you’re fearful of is what effect Hyungwon has on you when you’re around him. You don’t want to fall to him again.

\----

Somehow you end up in the car park of a cafe with a frown on your face and thin jacket barely able to keep you warm.

You’ve been stood up by Hyungwon. You can tell the least. He was meant to be here twenty minutes ago and he’s not here already despite his need to be early for everything. Why would he be late today? He knows you’d be nervous about seeing him again because he read people like books, today would be no different.

Did you miss Hyungwon? A little bit. A lot actually. He was the perfect guy for you until he showed his true colours and you missed coming home to lay with him in bed and talk about nothing for a few hours. Now you were coming home to a demonic being living with you because you have nothing to use him for. Well, “living” – Wonho didn’t eat your food or sleep in your bed. Minhyuk didn’t even know he existed. He didn’t really live with you, he was haunting you.

Maybe you should just go home and leave the possibility that he was coming to rest. Yes, Wonho had told you to come here and talk to Hyungwon, but that didn’t mean you had to. He was just a demon after all and could harvest your soul at any time. But maybe you trust him not to do that, since he’s a lot kinder than you ever imagined a demon to be.

The chance you were crazy was still there, but he was very real in your eyes.

And you’re about to leave, but you’re stopped by the voice of the very boy you’ve been dreading to see and also begging to see. “Sorry I’m late.”

To your surprise, when you turn to look at Hyungwon he looks no different. Same hair, same fashion and worst of all the same damn grin that’s had you so infatuated with him this whole time. What can you say to him? You’re lost for words as Hyungwon stares you down.

“I got the early train,” Hyungwon tells you, “I wanted to be here early but then my train was cancelled and because someone was on the tracks and I ended up being late. I’m sorry.”

That might be the very first apology Hyungwon has ever given you.

You nod once at his words and provide your own version of a smile back, one that isn’t nearly as comfortable as his own. “It’s okay. At least you got here.”

“But I barely got here,” Hyungwon argues.

He’s not always negative. He likes to try to push his pessimistic spirit into people but with you it doesn’t work much anymore. Standing here with him now is only bringing out his bad qualities—most of his qualities were bad when you thought about it—so you’re not really in the same mode you were around Hyungwon before.

No, you’d rather go home and pry some more information from Wonho since he was far more open with you thank Hyungwon ever was. Could be a demon thing.

“I wanted to see you because I feel like we haven’t talked enough about what happened,” you say softly.

“I suppose,” Hyungwon replied with a hum. He turns to the cafe and gestures for you to follow him. “Let’s do this inside. I need some coffee.”

As you’re following him inside you’re distracted by the blonde haired figure on your right, sitting at a table with a cup of something in his hand. You’d almost brushed it off as deja vu but when the figure—no, no, when Wonho—gives you a thumbs up you feel a whole lot more pressure to sort this out. Why had he followed you here?

At least you had someone to talk to on the way home.

“Would you like anything?” Hyungwon asks. He raises an eyebrow at you from across the table but you decline regardless. “Alright, give me a minute and I’ll be back.”

You think you’re being paranoid but he’s avoiding talking to you for the most part. He seems to be a little less interested than he used to be in why you used to say. Well, not really. Kinda. You’re not sure. You haven’t seen Hyungwon in a while and you’ve been trying to push the thoughts of him to the back of your mind.

Though regardless, you find yourself watching Hyungwon as he shamelessly talks to the barista and she starts blushing at whatever he said. He’s probably saying something about how pretty she is since he did that a lot and then giving her another compliment and—

Why are you even thinking about it. You’re only here to get him to explain himself.

“Okay, so….” Hyungwon places his cup down on the table and takes the seat opposite to where you’re sitting. There’s not an ounce of sympathy left on his expression and it makes you fear that maybe he’s going to tell you something which will make you want to use Wonho’s services. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Us, I guess.”

“Oh, really?” Hyungwon asks.

You nod. “Why’d you cheat on me?”

Hyungwon’s face is blank again. He’s been good at hiding his emotions before, but instead of trying to seem fake he’d just seem emotionless. Like when you’d get mad at him for something in the past; he’d look like nothing in the world mattered to him.

“It hurt, yanno,” you tell him. Your arms are in your lap and eyes flicking between him and the table. “I don’t know what I didn’t wrong. Did you hate me or something? Did I not give you enough?”

“No.”

“Then what was it?”

“It was nothing you caused.” Hyungwon shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee. It gives you a chance to look over to Wonho who’s listening in with a frown in his face, just like your own. “I don’t know what to tell you. I was so happy when you text me and said you wanted to meet up.”

You know in your head you shouldn’t be listening to his words. It’s just his way of getting in your hand and making you feel worse for not just accepting what he did. “Why didn’t you answer my call last Sunday?”

“Oh, you know I always keep my phone on silent. You didn’t call back so assumed it wasn’t important. Plus, I wasn’t really sure if you did actually want to talk to me. I missed you. I did.”

He’s lying through his teeth but you’re back in that cycle of falling for him even if you’re not falling for the same things as before. No, you’re now falling for the idea of having the relationship you used to have back. It would be amazing to be able to have everything in order again.

“I didn’t think you’d miss me,” you state. It follows his smile that you don’t really register as fake.

“I love you, of course I missed you.” Hyungwon attempts to reach across the table to take your hand but you’ve hidden it from him. He’s probably getting mixed signals from you, too. “Did you not believe me when I told you I loved you?”

You shake your head with a frown. The fact he told you he loved you was the problem. “I did believe you.”

“What’s the problem then?”

“I want to know why you went behind my back with those people.”

Hyungwon hums. He takes another sip of his coffee and you’re not sure if you’re going to be here for a while or if you’ll be leaving in the next minute.

He can tell you practically anything. He can tell you it was a mistake or that she lead him on, but whatever it is, you can tell already it’s not the truth. Hyungwon has no reason to tell you the truth.

So anything he says, you’ll take with a pinch of salt. Even if it’s said in the most sickly sweet way and makes you crave having him back in your life to no avail.

“I don’t know why,” he says. His eyes are shifty but you ignore it. “To get a reaction from you? I don’t know. I really don’t know. If I knew then I would have told you already. But I still feel the same about you.”

\----

“So, what’s on?”

You look over to Wonho and shrug. “Eh, nothing really. You have to wait for Christmas before movies get interesting.”

“So you’re not watching the television?”

“Hmm… nope. Did you want to watch something?”

Wonho shakes his head. “No, I wanted to spend time with you.”

Wonho’s caring personality has become more and more apparent as you spend more time with him. He’s cute, he’s friendly but he’s lonely. You’d gotten out of him last night that he has one friend who is the same species as he is called Hyunwoo, or Shownu.

The pair of them did the same job, but Hyunwoo was better at fixing things. They both offered services to those who needed it and they could perform the hardest of tasks when working together. He said they were both great leaders and both knew what to do in hard situations, but where Wonho was more sensitive in situations, Hyunwoo was quiet. They both had their faults.

Much unlike Wonho’s very own storybook antagonist called Kihyun. A cold blooded, secretive and manipulative man that seemed cute at first with his dastardly pink hair and matching cheeks. The pair weren’t exactly friends because they both had the same skill of killing people, and they were equally good at it.

“Well do you want to go somewhere?”

Wonho shakes his head. “No, I’m fine here. I just wanna talk to you and stuff. You’re nice to talk to.”

“Of course,” you answer, “tell me whatever you want. I like listening to you tell me things, even if I really don’t have a clue what you’re going on about. You’re an interesting person.“

“You think so?” Wonho questions.

You hum. “I do. I’ve never met anyone quite like you. Literally. I didn’t even know if demons existed and even the ones I thought may have existed, I didn’t picture them to be like you. I thought it would be a headless nun or Lucifer or something.”

“Aren’t I like… the equivalent of Lucifer though?”

“Not to me,” you answer him. Even as you look at Wonho now you’d never associate him fully with the devil, even if he… did kill people for a living. Not that you really knew how that process worked. “You’re not a fallen angel or anything. At least I don’t think you are.”

Wonho stays silent. Though he looks to you as if he wants to tell you something, nothing leaves his lips and you’re just watching each other with innocent eyes. Your assumption of what Wonho was, was that he is a spirit of some kind that you’d never fully understand. Maybe one day you would.

“You know, I was human once.”

You raise a brow as you take in Wonho’s words. “A human? When?”

“It wasn’t recent, don’t worry yourself. You’d never have met me in real life,” Wonho assures you. It ends up not being so reassuring because you’d actually have liked to meet him in real life. “I died in the seventh century. How much do you know about Korean history?”

“Enough to pass the class with some knowledge from dramas.”

“So you know what I mean when I say Baekje?” Wonho asks.

You nod again but don’t verbally answer to avoid any confusion with what he’s about to tell you.

“So people from Silla and China attacked Baekje, right? I was training to be a fighter for the General when they enemy attacked. I can’t really remember how I died, none of us can. I just remember when I was trying to work on my sword skills that someone burst into the room and started shouting but after that… I really can’t remember. I’m assuming I was killed then but I’ve never found my name on the record books or historical accounts. I wasn’t really important.”

“Hold on, you were alive then?”

“Yeah, I just told you that.” Wonho looks down to his wrist and then pushes it towards you. “See this scar? I got it when I was seventeen because they put me into battle too early and I didn’t know what to do. I remember everything from that time like it was… yesterday. Sorry, you didn’t need to know all of that.”

You shake your head and take his wrist, inspecting his scar that you can see is very visible on on his paler skin. “I didn’t really expect you to say that, to be honest. I thought you were going to tell me you sold your soul or something.”

“Nope, I was killed and offered an alternative to the afterlife,” Wonho says. He waits a moment before taking his arm back from you and holding it to his chest. “I don’t know how much I can tell you. I don’t want to be pulled away from you before you can use my services effectively. But… I’ll tell you my name is Shin Hoseok. Was Shin Hoseok. Wonho is the name I’ve used since I’ve been doing… this.”

“Would you like me to call you Hoseok then?”

Wonho cocks his head to the side. “Why would you call me Hoseok?”

“Because it’s your name?”

“Well… it’s not really, is it?” he looks down to the ground and sighs. “If you call me Hoseok then it makes me feel more human than I actually am. I don’t know if I’ll like it or not. To be honest with you, I’ve never been this close with someone to tell them my name. Now you know my human name then you have a lot of control over me. At least, that’s what Shownu tells me.”

Even if he had told you before that he wasn’t constricted by human things such as age or names, you realise he was at one point so it still has some hold over him. Your mind is blank for a moment but you manage to pull it back to the topic at hand. “So how old were you when you died?”

“I was twenty four. It was only a few months after my birthday.”

“So you’re stuck at that age forever, effectively?”

Wonho nods. “I haven’t aged at all. Not to brag or anything. I’d rather have just lived out my life than spending over a thousand years watching people fall before me. The only ever person I managed to befriend was Hyunwoo and I put him in the exact same position as me because it got lonely.”

“How did Hyunwoo die?”

“His wasn’t very inventive. He was a doctor who caught a tuberculosis from a patient and ignored his symptoms so he could carry on helping people. I befriended him because I spent a lot of time in his hospital because the patients were cursing people left, right and centre. I didn’t believe he deserved to just… leave this earth like that.”

If your suspicions that Wonho wasn’t one of the kinder people on earth did exist, they were starting to shatter. Though you had to keep it in your mind that he did kill people—that being the worst thing you could find him doing—everything else was pure. Befriending a kind doctor and saving his life to help people in the future mend things they otherwise couldn’t. It was… a redeeming quality.

“And Kihyun?” you ask.

“I killed him,” Wonho says. It takes you a moment to register what he says but when it hits you that he created his own enemy, your breath is taken away. “He was basically an assassin for King Taejo of Goryeo. He killed a military leader for Taejo and the wife wanted revenge. I was the one who had to do it. Of course it was a simple equation, I had to ask Kihyun to become a demon similar to myself because he had the talent to do it. Because I stopped him from doing what he wanted with his life, he tries to make my life hard too. It’s an eye for an eye.”

You’d never met Kihyun and you didn’t hope to ever see his face, but you can imagine how Wonho feels, just like Kihyun. Kihyun was talented enough to take orders directly from the king and Wonho cut that sort. You can imagine he’d be bitter—who wouldn’t be bitter at that point.

Kihyun didn’t see Wonho offering him the chance to become a soul stealer, or whatever, as an opportunity to carry on what he was doing. Judging by how Wonho spoke he had no say in the matter. He did what he was asked to do.

And you feel a lot of sympathy for him.

“But you were just doing your job, Hoseok.”

Wonho looks up to you with eyes that are gleaming in the light. It makes you freeze for a second; is he sad or angry? You really can’t decide for yourself. “You can choose to do a job, and you can choose to quit a job too. I can’t do either. This is my life and I’m starting to hate it.”

“Don’t think about your job for now. Until I find something for you to do for me, you’re free to explore the world without a care in your mind. Do everything you’ve wanted to do.”

“Right now all I want to do is be here with you.”

“Then… stay here and we will stop talking about Wonho’s life,” you suggest. You can see in Wonho’s eyes that he’s not himself, anyway. “Forget about Wonho. Forget what you do for a living. You’re Shin Hoseok when you’re with me.”

He stays still again for a moment. He’s watching you so closely that he’s staring into the soul many of his people would love to take, and it makes you feel so bare before him. Everything is laid down for him to see. If he’s willing to be open with you, you’ll do the exact same thing.

Because it’s unearthly to think of how you’re pulled towards him so effortlessly. You’ve read those love stories where two people are overly attached and fall in love within ten days. You do barely know Wonho—Hoseok, whatever—but that didn’t matter to you. What did matter was that the two of you were in the same position.

You’d both been fucked over by the life you thought was going to carry you on to better things.

That, ultimately, is why you bonded so well in the end. Because the two of you were fighting the same losing battle against life to try and get back the reality you once had. When you were both happy and everything was good.

In that sense, you could help each other. The two of you could fight together and settle for a new reality that you both liked.

You could live with Wonho for the rest of your life. He could find a new purpose with you. Is it wrong to want to kiss him so deeply and bring some life back into his pale skin and red lips? You can hope not. You really can.

“I’m Hoseok. With you I’m not Wonho, I’m Hoseok. Yeah.”

\----

Minhyuk, quite forcefully, has taken you to the park near where you live so that you can both talk. He’s probably heard you laughing to yourself when Wonho tells you a joke of some kind and now thinks you’re totally crazy. Or he thinks you’re becoming more like him, because he talks to himself when he’s behind the bar where he works and it freaks his customers out sometimes.

“Don’t you think a dog would be a great addition?” Minhyuk asks. He sips on his milkshake, then pushes his glasses further up his nose. “I’ll take care of her, but I think a dog would be cute. Especially a little one that’s fluffy and cute.”

It’s probably a little bad that your first thought is that dogs aren’t good with Wonho. He’d told you the last person he was summoned by had a dog that chased him everywhere. A Rottweiler, too.

“I don’t know, Minhyuk. Isn’t that against the lease?”

Minhyuk rolls his eyes. “Painting the walls was against the lease too, but after I spoke to the landlord she praised my caring and considerate attitude and told me to go ahead. If I say it’s my sick grandma’s dog, she’ll say it’s okay because she loves me.”

“That’s a bit optimistic.”

“I am optimism, (y/n). Nothing is impossible unless you die trying, so I will attempt to get a puppy into our apartment and when I do get one, you can thank me for the overload of cuteness everyday of our lives.”

Again, your thoughts run straight back to Wonho and you shake your head. “I don’t think getting one is the best idea, Minhyuk.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because what?” Minhyuk presses, eyebrows furrowed. You know deep down he won’t let this go but you’re determined to get him to blindly just say he won’t attempt to get a dog. It’s worth a shot. “Do you have an allergy?”

You shake your head. “No. I’ve been around dogs a lot. I’m not allergic.”

“Then why wouldn’t you be able to… ohmygod. Someone you know is allergic, aren’t they!”

This time, you don’t answer. Minhyuk can work it out for himself and slowly come to the realisation that someone else is hanging around with you. Changkyun isn’t allergic and neither is Jooheon. They’re your only friends at this point that live in the area to see you often enough.

“Have you met a new person?” Minhyuk questions. He places down his cup and shuffles closer to you. “Is there a new guy in your life you haven’t told me about?”

You bite your tongue for the better part of a second. “Maybe.”

“Maybe!”

“I wouldn’t really say we’re going to date.” You have to disguise your we can’t physically date with some other lame excuse because Minhyuk isn’t going to believe anything you say. Uh, who would? You can’t just tell people oh hey I met this guy, he’s a demon. I think he’s cute and I would date him in a heartbeat. “We’re really different. I just think he’s cute.”

Minhyuk raises and eyebrow. “Cute? You just think he’s cute?”

“Well, no. He’s not just cute. He’s got the nicest face and his eyes are really pretty. I’m not joking, they make me question my sanity because when I look into them I’m lost in another world. And his body is just so… nice! I kinda just wanna cuddle with him and fall asleep in his arms because they so attractive—I haven’t even talked about his personality yet! He’s so kind and amazing and it really freaks me out because he’s so different to guys I usually like that it scares me because he’s not even a tad asshole! He’s just plain kind and sweet and every time I’m near him my heart melts.”

Minhyuk doesn’t say anything. You’re sure he didn’t expect you to come out with that, but he’s a hopeless romantic so you’re sure he’ll appreciate it. Even if he is quiet for so long.

“And who is this guy?”

“Uhm…” his reply catches you off-guard. You half expected him to gush about your description but he doesn’t and that sucks. “You don’t know him. You don’t.”

“And? What’s his name? Where is he from?”

You don’t really know what to answer. Wonho’s name isn’t exactly Wonho; he’s given a name to use on earth which doesn’t match the one he previously had on earth when he was mortal. You’d learnt all this beforehand. As for where he came from, you didn’t know that either. Wonho didn’t tell you where he was originally from and what his actual human name was all those years ago.

It’s a low blow because… you don’t actually know him that well.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does,” Minhyuk says. He sighs, placing his hand on your forearm and giving you the look formed from years of condescending behaviour. “I want to make sure they guy you like is good for you, not a twat like Hyungwon.”

“Does it sound like I’m back with Hyungwon to you?” You question.

“With that description, yes it does. You sound about as infatuated as you were when you first met Hyungwon and that’s what scares me.”

When you put it that way, things were much more concerning.

You’d be the first to admit that when you first met Hyungwon you’d been gushing about how perfect he was to everything. Maybe that was your fault; you took a while to find bad points in people. Yes, Wonho was basically a murderer but you couldn’t confine him to human rules when he wasn’t really… human. The way he is, it’s completely different to any way that Hyungwon would act ever.

Hyungwon’s behaviours could have been predicted. Wonho on the other hand, is honest. He hadn’t held much back. He’d told you everything even on the grounds you wouldn’t believe him, which were very high.

“This is different,” you tell Minhyuk, “this guy is good. He’s nothing like Hyungwon.”

Minhyuk rolls his eyes again. “Hyungwon was nothing like Hyungwon when you first met him, either.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Minhyuk.”

“Let me meet him,” Minhyuk suggest, his tone rather whiny.

The thing is, you’d love for Minhyuk to meet him. He is your best friend after all and you share with him almost everything in the world. So meeting a potential boyfriend is nothing. It’s just… you have no bloody idea whether Minhyuk can physically see Wonho since he’s not the one who summoned him.

But you’d still ask. It would be nice to get a second approval on Wonho do know you’re not just entranced by his face and body and kind personality and voice of an angel. A fallen one, at that.

“If you want to?”

Minhyuk freezes. His eyes are wide and he looks shell shocked. “You’ll let me meet him?”

“I’ll ask him when he’s free,” you answer, offering the softest of smiles you can. You’d never given this option with Hyungwon. “You’ll like him too. I bet you’ll get on really well.”

“I’ll decide when I see him. That’s the only way I’ll know he’s not a complete copy of Hyungwon – he’s one hundred per cent your type on paper, isn’t he?”

Minhyuk’s snigger at a poorly timed joked from those reality shows he watched only makes you narrow your eyes at him. He makes references too often now, almost as often as the times you’re sure you see Wonho lurking in the corner of your eye.

He is bound to you, after all.

\----

“Which one will it be?”

You’re restricted completely with your hands behind your back and feet tied to the chair. You’re not sure who just spoke but their voice is near terrifying. All the while you can’t see anything, all your senses are limited and you’re freezing.

You don’t need to be a genius to work out that any more time spent at this level will result in you dying from hypothermia.

“Which one?” The same voice repeats. This time it’s far more abrasive and you can’t hear for a second after. “I won’t give you many chances to make your pick here. You have to tell me which one.”

“Which what!” You shout back.

Needle thin icicles are being drawn into your wrists where your arms are stuck behind the chair. It hurts more than you could imagine something so small ever could.

“Which one?” It says again. “I won’t give you many chances to make your pick here. You have to tell me which one.”

It’s frustrating to be so helpless in the situation but you’re torn between getting angry or being submissive. You don’t know what this is referring to but it could be absolutely anything. People. Friends. Family. Your life or your death.

“(y/n)-ah.”

Your head immediately turns in the direction of your name being called. It’s to your left. It’s Chae Hyungwon speaking like he used to when he wanted something from you.

“(y/n)-ah. You have to choose which one.”

“Hyungwon?” You call out after he stops. There’s no answer. “Hyungwon, what’s going on? What am I doing here?”

This time he doesn’t speak. There’s a shift in the atmosphere around you and though at first you like it, it doesn’t last. You end up more scared for what’s around you even though you can’t have any clues as to what it actually is you’ll be facing. Something tells you that around you is a monster. Something you’d be too scared to meet at the best of times.

But it’s no monster.

“Sweetheart, you just need to pick,” Wonho says this time. It’s his voice from the first night you met him and it sends you into mass panic. You won’t get out from this alive, you’d be stupid to think you could. “Which one?”

All of the voices are slowly fading into one as your consciousness is starting to fade. What a predictable scenario to have the two things you’ve been wanting around you the most. You should have seen this coming.

You can’t have both Wonho and Hyungwon.

“Hoseok,” you say this time, begging for an answer you’re unlikely to get. “Hoseok. Wonho. Please. What is happening?”

He’s right by your ear now, lips ghosting over your skin that’s so sensitive to his touch. But Hyungwon is the other side. You can tell. Your blinded eyes are craving a sight. “Which one?”

“I won’t give you many chances to make your pick here. You have to tell me which one.”

“Pick one (y/n)-ah,” Hyungwon says. His fingers sprawl over your thigh that’s bare. You can feel him dragging his fingers across your skin and they’re leaving scrape marks. Scratch marks. “Which demon is it you’d like to be with?”

“Which one?” Wonho repeats.

“Which one?”

“Which one?”

“Which one?”

“I won’t give you many chances to make your pick here. You have to tell me which one.”

It feels like your lips are stuck together. There’s no way you’ll ever be able to answer anyway, so this is practically useless to you right now. You can try to rip your lips apart but they won’t budge. You’re stuck. You can’t pick even if you wanted to.

Wonho’s got his hands on you now. Claws pressing into your skin that’s fragile and threatening to burst under the pressure he’s creating. He’s hurting you. He’s causing you so much pain. Hyungwon’s just as bad.

But they both stop.

You think it’s your chance to escape, so you’ll take it. You pull your hands from their ties as hard as you can, praying that the rope will break under the pressure. Your feet are banging against the chair too in an attempt to get as much of yourself free as possible. It is near impossible.

The blindfold is making things worse. You must be lucid dreaming because as soon as you think of the dastardly blindfold it slips from your eyes and you’re left to witness the scene in front of you. It’s not Hyungwon. It’s not Wonho. It is demonic.

It’s two beings that are in no way human and they’re coming straight for you.

Your heart is racing and your eyes are brimming with water as you sit up in your bed, panting for some mundane breaths that fill the air around you. You’re crying and you can’t stop it. You can’t even find a real explanation as to why because it’s just a dream but it felt so real.

“Hey.” You’re caught in a flurry of emotions as Wonho touches your shoulder. You’re not sure when he got beside you, how he got beside you. It doesn’t matter. You fall into his arms either way. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Wonho doesn’t seem fazed by your tears. You’re practically sobbing into his shirt at this point but he doesn’t say a word. He just sits there and takes it all. He rubs your back as you’re trying to reach for breath and doesn’t complain at all to you.

He waits for you to talk instead. He sits with you for what seems like hours as you try to forget what you’ve just seen. It’s not that bad. You didn’t expect it and that’s why everything is so unclear to you. It’s sending you to the depths of your despair.

“Is everything okay?” Wonho asks. He looks down to you with concern that you didn’t want to ask for.

“Nightmare,” you manage to make out. It takes a few breaths for you to control your mindset and talk to him properly. “I get them sometimes. Uhm… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m fine.”

Wonho nods but doesn’t move from where he’s sitting. “Do you maybe wanna talk about it?”

“Talk about it?”

“Yeah.” Wonho offers a smile but you can’t reciprocate it. “Talking helps, doesn’t it?”

You’re not exactly sure how you’re supposed to tell Wonho that you dreamt about him and your ex boyfriend being demonic beasts, both of which you may consider them to be from different points of view. It really did come down to how you looked at it.

“These two things were telling me to choose something. It was strange. I was just spooked. I’ve had worse.”

You’re lying to him though. It was scarily close to being accurate in relation to your real life. That’s why you were worried. The way you feel for Wonho isn’t a way that you’d consider similar to Hyungwon. Well, you had a crush.

Yes, a crush on Wonho. He was what those stories told you about. A boy that’s different and extremely attractive who you’d one day love to fall in love with but one you’d never actually be able to happily be in love with. He is a demon.

Hyungwon was someone you would admit to being hopelessly in love with so long that you were willing to look past everything he’s done that’s bad. He was everything you wanted from a classical romance. He was your prince. He was also, hand on heart, a demon.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Wonho says. You’d take that with a pinch of salt but you know his power is beyond what you can recognise. “I’ll protect you. I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you. That I can promise.”

“Hoseok.” You have to look away from him because you fear you’ll blurt out words that don’t even make sense. Your heart is beating fast again. Faster than ever. “You can’t say something like that. I’m not important. You have other problems aside from me.”

Wonho laughs at your statement, shaking his head. “You know you’re the only thing that I can associate myself with for now.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know, I know.” Wonho’s eyes shift away from yours as you look up to him again. He’s gone shy, something you’ve not seen him do very often. “Don’t say you’re not important. You know you’re important to me.”

You roll your eyes. “Yeah but… my value as a person isn’t as dear as one of the people who rule the earth or a scientist who’s curing people of diseases.”

“What if I told you that to me, you were like a scientist that cured my disease?”

“It depends,” you answer him, shrugging. “What kind of disease?”

“Loneliness.”

His answer comes as the brutally honest truth. You’d never expected him to be so upfront with his position in life, not that he hadn’t been honest before, but he doesn’t hold back now and just tells you. He doesn’t like where he is or what he’s doing and you feel more sympathy for him than before.

“Can you tell me what a kiss is?” Wonho asks. He’s returned to the innocent boy you were sure he was when he was Shin Hoseok of the Baekje kingdom. Not Wonho who knew everything there was to be.

Not that you get a chance to answer, anyway. Wonho surprises you with something you’d never expected. You can tell him what a kiss is or you can show him.

He leans down in the slowest of fashions, waiting a moment before he presses his lips against your own. He’s inexperienced, you knew that but it’s obvious by how stiff he is until you kiss him back. Your hand is tangled in his hair as you try to bring him closer to you, his own fingers on your back to pull you up to his level.

Expecting that would have come at a price. You don’t ever want to move away from him but you know you have to. You’re stuck with the thought that you kissed Wonho but he’s preoccupied with his own ideas. “That’s what a kiss is?”

\----

Somehow you wake up at the crack of dawn. That’s impossible in itself since you love to sleep in, but the other slightly worrying thing is that you wake up with Wonho right next to you.

Your immediate thought—even though you hate yourself for it—is to check whether you’re still wearing clothes. You are, thank god, but that eliminated any chance of some demon baby coming in the works that you had no recollection of creating.

No, you can’t remember how you got here. One minute you were sitting there crying into Wonho’s arms and the next you were kissing him and the next… you must have fallen asleep in his arms again. You can’t remember talking about anything last night apart from when Wonho was trying to assure you that you’d be okay forever.

Or that he’d protect you. It was the same thing.

"Is something wrong?”

You’re startled by the sound of Wonho’s voice, one you didn’t expect to hear this morning, yet alone beside you. He’s watching you with curious eyes, but you manage to resist his charm. “Uhm… no. No, I just didn’t expect to be up this early. Why are you awake?”

“I don’t sleep.”

“Oh.”

“Well, I can’t sleep,” Wonho corrects himself. He shifts in his position so his arm is around your waist rather than your chest in the hopes you’ll be a little more comfortable. “I’ve never been able to sleep. I just watch the world go by. Gives me a lot of time to think and also gives me a lot of time to protect you.”

You roll your eyes playfully at his words. “No, you don’t have to protect me. I told you I didn’t need you to.”

“But I want to,” Wonho says.

His words are meant to assure you that he wants what you want, too. You’re not sure if you should bring up the fact he kissed you or if he should do it or… this hasn’t happened to you before. The first time you kissed Hyungwon it was something that didn’t take you by surprise and you were sure of your feelings at that point.

Right now your head and your heart is a mess when it comes to Wonho.

“I was thinking yesterday about your life before you died.”

Wonho raises an eyebrow. “Why were you thinking about that?”

“Because I want to help you,” you answer him honestly, “have you ever wanted to go back to where you died? Have you been?”

“I’ve never been.”

“Do you want to?”

Wonho shrugs. He seems way less comfortable talking now and has gone stiff again. “The more I think about where I came from, the less I want to go back. I want to have the life I had back then but I know I never will. If I go back to where I died then it’s like I’m tempting myself with the impossible.”

“Then… think of going back there like a goodbye to your past. You’ll move onto your future and become a new person who will let go of the past.”

“But I still don’t want to be Wonho,” he states. A sigh leaves his lips and makes you consider what kind of life it must be for him. To outlive everyone. “Power isn’t what I want. I never wanted power. I just wanted to protect the people I loved. Now I’m killing people because I’m cursed with immortality and power. I would do anything to leave those two things behind.”

And you can see why.

Now that you think of it, he’s watched his family die before his eyes. He’s seen the fall of his beloved kingdom and many after it. He’s watched world war one, world war two. He’s seen kids beaten and soldiers murdered. He’s witnessed nuclear weaponry used against countries and the destruction of the world as we know it.

You can’t try to console him.

“You know, a lot of people crave immortality in this day and age,” you tell Wonho. He looks to you curiously but stays quiet. “Life is too short to for us to achieve things now. I get it, when Baekje was a Kingdom you could live to fifty and have a satisfied life. Now you can live to fifty and still be stuck in debt and you might not even be happy yet. All we ever do is look for ways to live for longer. I do it. I say I want a forever that I won’t ever get but I live in the hopes that maybe I will.”

Wonho hums. “I see that. I do.”

“But if I was immortal, I would feel the same way you do.”

Your words cause a smile to brighten on Wonho’s lips. He nods, resting his head back against your pillow and shutting his eyes. “It’s a gift I never wanted.”

“It’s not a gift. It’s a curse, and it has a side effect of being alone forever.”

“Do you know why, right now, I wish I wasn’t immortal?” Wonho says. You shake your head, and Wonho sighs again. “You.”

“Me?”

Wonho refrains from answering straight away. Instead, he brings a delicate hand to your face and pushes your hair back behind your hair line so it’s not on your face. “The last person I spoke to I made exactly like me. I’ll still around with you until your death and either have to curse you with this too or lose you forever. I’ll get too attached to let you go.”

“Do you know when people die?”

“I’m not a grim reaper.”

Touche, again.

“I know one though.”

You almost choke at his words. “You do?”

“Of course I do. We’re all part of the same family. There’s lots of reapers who do similar jobs, like there are demons who do their jobs and whatever. There’s angels too but we don’t interact. I could try and explain it all but we’d be here a long time. You’ll never meet an angel though, not while I’m here.”

He’s right, there’s so much that you don’t know about the world that if you ever asked him to explain it, you’d have too much to go through for it all to be said quickly. So it’s for the best that Wonho doesn’t tell you, maybe you’ll be able to sleep easier at night not knowing what beasts can steal your soul.

Besides, Wonho will protect you from it now. If he really wants to, you’ll let him.

“Hoseok, if you want to protect me then you can.”

Wonho raises his eyebrow. “Oh, you’ll let me protect you now?”

“Only because I’m weak and you’re not. And you know a grim reaper.”

You’d keep the real reason to yourself, Wonho didn’t have to know.

\----

You’d managed to bring Wonho to the outskirts of Seoul, tempting him by saying that you were going to take him to a place that sells bubble tea in the widest varieties in the entirety of Asia.

That was a complete lie though. After spending yesterday researching the kingdom of Baekje, you’d managed to track down one of the military bases used in that era (according to ruins found in the site). More digging into online resources showed that it was destroyed by forces from Silla and you had a strong feeling that it could be the one where Wonho had lost his life all those years ago.

There was no record of names that you could find, but there was just something telling you that military base was the one he was at on that day.

You were sure if you had told him you were bringing him here he would have told you that it was pointless, which was the reason you were going to just take him straight to the ruins and see if he recognised anything for himself. If it was where he died then maybe it would give him some kind of closure, like what he wanted you to get with Hyungwon.

The two of you were really starting to help each other out and you couldn’t argue with the thoughts rattling your mind everyday. Ever since he kissed you and made you feel safer than anything.

A forever with Wonho wouldn’t be bad.

“What are we doing here?” Wonho asks. He’s idly walking beside you as you lead him down a dirt trail through some trees. “This is kinda weird, you know? You brought me to a forest to find bubble tea. I was fine with white peach to be honest.”

You roll your eyes and turn back to him, making him stop in his path. “You’ll either love me or hate me when we get there, so can you just follow me?”

“Why would I…”

Wonho stops talking and does as you tell him, following behind you as the clearing in the forest begins to become more visible. You know your heart is beating a little faster because Wonho has warned you of his power and you don’t want to set something off inside him. But he has to come back here to get a grasp on the life he’s lost and start living a new one you’ll help him make.

He must know something else is going on, because he’s walking closer to you and the back of his hand is brushing across your own as he gains on you. He’s speed walking, he knows something is here.

And he stops completely when you reach the clearing of the forest, showing the battered ruins that were barely intact of a city that once stood over a thousand years ago.

“I tried to find ruins from the Baekje era, and these were nearby,” you tell Wonho. He’s not moving and instead, he just stares down at the site before him. “You said you were from near here one time. This base was attacked when Silla invaded and lots of the military were killed here. So I… I brought you here to see if this was your home.”

“Can I go closer?” Wonho asks, barely turning to you. His voice is so innocent, so childlike, that it sends a shiver down your spine.

You nod, gesturing for him to go as close as he likes. “Go as close as you would like.”

“Can you come with me, though?”

Wonho’s question is only answered with a hesitant nod.

You follow him forward, carefully stepping over stones and other objects as you try to keep up with Wonho’s pace. He’s excited, or he’s shocked. One or the other. His body is tense but that’s because he’s suddenly being flooded with the memories of his life as Hoseok that he wanted back so badly.

He stops at a piece of stone that’s on the floor with some carvings in it. You can’t read the Kanji but it seems he can, and he knows exactly what it means. It’s dropped back to the ground, then Wonho is off again towards the standing building that looks to have been a temple once. You can’t really tell. It’s no longer a building.

But Wonho knows exactly what it is. He lived here. This is a moment saved in time from the time he died.

“This is my home,” Wonho states. It’s barely audible but you just catch it. Wonho turns around to get a full view of the patch of ruins that he would know inside out. When he finally meets your eyes he looks like he’s about to fall apart. “This is where I died. This is my home.”

This is his querencia.

You’re not sure if you should be talking to him, or asking if everything is okay. Instead you follow Wonho as he stumbles across the wasteland, stopping at various points to have another look around. In his eyes there’s a fire that’s being lit with every moment he spends here.

But there’s a particular patch of grass that he stops at. It’s over to other side to where you’d entered, and it’s blocked by some of the stone that still is risen above the ground. You’d not have even picked up that anything was near there because everything was so empty.

All you’d picked up on was the lack of birds singing nearby. The lifelessness the dull grass carried and how the trees blocked this off from being seen by the unsuspecting people who drove by. Emptiness. Loneliness. Anyone from here would have been facing those two things, just like Wonho.

“They trained us over there,” Wonho says. He’s pointing to an area that’s only left with a marked post of stone that you’d all be unsuspecting of. You’d been so distracted by what would come of people here that you’d began to forget Wonho was one of the only remaining things from this area. “I’m sure if we looked hard enough we’d find my body.”

You hum at his words, not finding another response that can fit his words. “They said online that the site here was considered to be a vital town at one point.”

“It was. Lots of merchants came through here and they would carry gifts that no other could compare to. There was lots of thieves, but only because there was lots of rich people here. The forest was never there. There were wooden houses of the poor over there who would come to the temple and pray for their loved ones. We’d have to watch over the town at night.”

Wonho didn’t lie when he said he recalled it like it was yesterday. Nostalgia has washed over him and sent him into a state that you’re surprised at. Who knew he’d have been so calm.

“My family lived just there,” he tells you. It was exactly where he’d stopped to pick up something from the ground. “My mother knew about the thieves here, so she used to put her jewellery in the strangest of places. Her rings would be placed in the straw of her horses and necklaces in her shoes. My father gave her a hair pin for their wedding and she used to hide it in the mud outside.”

In his hand is a gold binyeo, with leaves and flowers at the end of it. The colour is beginning to fade a little, the gold is less prominent but it is no less beautiful than those you’ve seen in museums for others at the same period. It’s the very last part of his family that’s left.

He smiles down at the precious metal in his hands. “I don’t know what happened to her. Or my father, actually. The first thing I did when I had this body back was look for them but they weren’t here. No one was here. They were all killed that night, no one was spared. If I wouldn’t have ended up like this then I could have spent the afterlife with them.”

“But you can’t change what happened.”

“I know, I don’t want to change anything.” Wonho takes a step closer to you and sighs. “I just wished I could have had a chance at offering them the chance to be like me. So they didn’t have to be lost in history like everything else is. I hate seeing everyone around me…die. I hate being the only one who lives through everything.”

Wonho hasn’t cried around you before but you know it’s coming. The look on his face gives it away because his bottom lip is quivering ever so slightly. Your immediate response is to wrap your arms around his chest and bring him closer to you, allowing him to rest his head on your shoulder.

One of his hands is on your back, holding you so tight to him it’s near impossible to let go of him. Not that you would. If you had a chance to stay for the forever you so desperately searched for, you’d take it. No doubt about it.

“Thank you,” he says. His head is buried in the crook of your neck and the words he says are just barely choked through sobs that come from remembering the past he’d missed for so long. “Thank you so much.”

\----

Wonho is rather… quiet today.

Well, you should be referring to him as Hoseok but you had gotten used to Wonho now; it fit his personality better in your eyes, anyway. If you considered his demonic—add quotations around that, because he was not at all your usual demon—to be the one he had all the time.

Wonho had been the exact same from when he met you. He knew how to assert his dominance and if he needed to, he could make anyone do anything for him. However he had a laugh that would brighten anyone’s day, and a smile that you could take a picture of and place in every museum.

“Is everything okay?” You ask him, turning to Wonho who’s sitting beside you on your bed.

He hums but says no more.

“Yah, Hoseok, you’re acting like a dog chased you again,” you complain, tugging on his shirt’s sleeve to try and encourage him to be a little brighter today. “And don’t try to tell me one did. You’re assigned to me and like you said, wherever I go, you go too. I saw no dogs today.”

“I’m just tired, I guess.”

His fiasco with your bad dream meant you knew that was a plain lie. Wonho doesn’t sleep; he physically can’t.

You’re not even sure if you should begin to question him or just leave him. The latter sounds easier but the more you’ve attached yourself to Wonho, the more you wish to make sure he’s okay. After all, he spent so long alone that it must feel good to feel like someone does actually care for you.

Which you did, more than anything. As much as it terrified you that the guy you kinda really liked at first is a demon, now you don’t really care for it. He’s no different to you and Minhyuk. He was exactly like all humans before he died and was offered another chance to live his life.

“You know I’m here for you when you want to talk,” you assure Wonho. You take his hand and squeeze it gently, offering a smile that turns out to be more empathetic than you first want it to be. “About anything. Demon stuff or whatever. If you made a mistake years ago and now it’s haunting you, tell me about it. Talking helps.”

“It’s nothing demon,” Wonho answers.

He just sighs and rests his head on your shoulder, moving his arm so it’s loosely around your waist from his position beside you. His rather heavy breathing hits your shoulder every few moments and it almost sends you into a trance. You’re watching him so closely, eyes heavier with every blink he makes.

“Actually, it’s about you.”

“Me?” You return.

“Yes, you,” Wonho says. He lifts his head and shifts back a little from you on the bed so he can see you fully. “This is going to sound stupid but… I think I may like you.”

You only frown. “Like me? Hoseok, I already told you that we’re friends. You don’t have tell me th—do you mean like me?”

“I-I’m not sure.” Wonho sighs again and then groans, flopping back against your pillows and shutting his eyes tight. “I don’t even know what like means. I just hear it on all those crappy dramas that Minhyuk watches. But they say that they feel strongly about the person and that they sometimes really want to kiss them and cuddle them and… that’s what I want to do with you!”

Your throat is far too dry to comment. Thank god he had his eyes shut or he’d see the most confused but equally thankful face of the century.

“And then they say that thing. Saranghae. How do you even know if you love someone! I loved my parents but I didn’t love them in that way. It’s confusing. You humans have made everything so complicated.”

“You were never in love when you were human?” You ask him, curious as to his answer.

Of course you could give him your own view on love. You’d known you loved Hyungwon because you couldn’t see a life without him. You’d included him in every one of your futures which may have been the stupidest thing you’ve ever done but at the time, it made sense. Hyungwon was your future.

“Of course I didn’t!” Wonho sits up again and flails his arms around dramatically. “I trained every day of my life. There was no time for loving anyone at all. Well, one of the guys I trained with was kinda cute but I didn’t love him!”

“Do you want my opinion on love?”

Wonho nods.

“You’ll just know it,” you tell him, “do you think I knew I loved Hyungwon? No, I didn’t. Everything about how I felt was different to how I felt for everyone before him. I took a crazy guess that maybe what I felt was love and it led me to wanting to be with him forever.”

“Forever?”

You hum, swallowing hard at the words you’ve told Wonho. “Forever was a lot shorter than I planned.”

He stays quiet for a moment though, eyes searching your body for more answers to questions he hadn’t spoken. He sees you as some kind of life coach, and even if you told him a thousand times you knew barely anything about the world, he would take none of it.

“In that case, I think I’m in love with you.”

Now, Wonho saying something like that was not what you expected.

“I thought you were annoying at first, and that you wanted revenge on an ex who also thought you were annoying. But now I see you are so much more than that, and you’ve taught me so much about everything. I look at you and my heart beats so quickly that I fear it may explode. I want to stay here with you forever. Does that sound like I’m in love with you?”

“I can’t tell you if you’re in love with me.”

Wonho rolls his eyes and lightly smacks your arm as he pouts. “You know what I mean! Does it sound like I’m in love with you? I don’t want to tell you I’m in love with you when I’m not.”

“It does sound like you do care about me.”

“I do think that that I love you,” Wonho says. He disregards your words and shuffles closer to you, placing his hands on your shoulders. He pronounces every syllable down to a T. “Ever since I’ve known you, something about you has made me want to stick around forever. I don’t want you to ever decide what you want me to do for you, because if you do that means I have to go and you’ll never see me again. I’ll miss this! I’ll miss being able to wake up with you and fall asleep next to you… well, watch you fall asleep. But same difference! I want this forever.”

Anyone would think it’s sweet. Your heart is doing backflips and telling to just kiss him now and seal the deal he’s creating but your brain is telling you that Wonho knows nothing of love.

He relies on you for information about love. All he knows about love is dramas and Minhyuk’s rambles and your own situation with Hyungwon. He doesn’t know what real love is because he hasn’t seen him around him. Following the same principle, you mustn’t have either.

So you resist the temptation to kiss him and take a deep, exaggerated breath. “You’ve only known me a month.”

“And?”

“And you don’t know everything about me yet!”

“Yes I do!” Wonho argues. He lets go on your shoulders and moves closer to you once again. “You talk in your sleep about chickens and you cry at movies that aren’t sad. You complain about food and mix colours in the wash. For you yoghurt is a main meal alongside chicken and all your friends are the weirdest people ever. You dated a shitty guy who was horrible to you and summoned a demon to kill him. I know these things because I’m with you all the time and I know you. I know you so well that I know I want to have all of those things in my life. I want to eat yoghurt for dinner and listen to you talk about chickens as you sleep. Everything you think is bad about yourself, I think it’s amazing. I love it. I do love you.”

Fuck it. Against all odds of you ignoring his confession because it can’t be accurate and he’s just convincing himself otherwise, you throw yourself towards him so your bodies are flush and lips just touching. Your mind goes blank as his cold skin touches your own, the feeling of darkness intensifying as he brings his hand to your cheek and pulls you into him.

Kissing him takes you to another realm, and you could live there everyday.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s not the world’s best kisser. He nips at your lips and is desperate for your touch so he ends up gasping for air every so often. You can’t even pinpoint it to a certain feeling because this is so alien to you, to experience such emotion in one simple movement between two people.

And you may hate yourself for it, but you may love him too.

\----

You’d like to think that things do happen for a reason.

However, the knocking on your door as you’re trying to get Wonho to try on your lipstick—because it will look so good on you—after an hour of convincing him, is not something you’d liked to have happened. You’re left stumped, annoyed, and at a loss from having to be able to make Wonho look pretty.

“You gotta go get it,” Wonho says, joking with you. He knows you’re annoyed and teases you for your frown. Thank god Minhyuk wasn’t here or he’d think you’d gone insane for being as cute as he was in a relationship.

Not that you’re in a relationship with Wonho or anything. Maybe you’d like to be.

How were you supposed to ask him?

“Fine,” you huff, leaving him alone on the couch so you can go to the door. “But I mean it, you’re going to have red lips whether you like it or not.”

You expect the person at the door to be someone selling something or lost; who reasonably comes up to the thirteenth floor of a building when they can call you instead.

But surprises are hitting you all over, and instead of a boring personal sales person you have a pretty man who’s got pink hair and a rather beautiful face. What is your problem? You seem to be attracting all the hot guys to you. Maybe something has happened and you’re secretly cursed with this.

“(y/n)?” He asks.

Behind you, you hear Wonho stand up and make his way towards you. Regardless, you answer the man with a smile. “That’s me. How can I help?”

He’s wearing this black, silk shirt that lines his shape very well. He looks rather old fashioned but the circle rimmed glasses are actually fitting and modern compared to the rest. You’re not sure if you’re staring at a ghost straight out of the seventeenth century of if this guy just really likes old stuff.

It’s neither, you find out pretty soon. Wonho knows exactly who you’re speaking with. “Kihyun?”

“Hello Wonho,” he answers. You heart is frozen at this point. You know exactly who this is and if there was ever someone you don’t do it’s tell a damn demon your name. They have power over you, too. “I didn’t know you were here. What a nice surprise. I’m here to carry out a job.”

Wonho’s beside you and slowly edging so he can be in front of you. He’s being rather obvious that he’s worried. “With who?”

“(y/n).”

“What are you doing?” Wonho asks for you.

Secretly you’re thankful he’s speaking for you since you have no idea what to say and Wonho may be able to do something for you. He can help. He can protect you, like he said he would.

“It seems someone by the name of Chae Hyungwon has summoned me here for… revenge,” Kihyun states. He takes a step towards you and Wonho places himself between the two of you so that there’s some kind of margin of safety. “I’m just doing my job, Wonho. Please do not interfere. May I come inside?”

Wonho is ready to refuse but you answer for him. “Let’s not do this outside.”

You don’t want to invite him in but you have to. He’s going to kill you, you assume. Wonho could make people wish they were dead but Kihyun just plain killed people. That’s what Hyungwon wanted for you.

Holy shit, he’s crazy like you are.

“Kihyun, I’ll ask once. Why are you here?”

Kihyun is far too relaxed for your liking. He strolls to a halt in your living room like this is no care for him. Wonho is frustrated and he’s in no way calm and that’s itself makes you more worried than anything. You could get out of this if you tried, you knew that.

“As I said before, Chae Hyungwon has summoned me to take the life of his ex girlfriend,” Kihyun says. He shrugs his shoulders. “I mean, he was a bit of a dickhead. I’ll admit that. But you shouldn’t have missed those dates with him to be with your new guy. Only now have I realised that your new guy is… Wonho. That’s lovely.”

“You’re not doing that, Kihyun.”

“But I have to, Wonho.”

They’re bickering back and forth but your mind is somewhere else. It’s with Hyungwon and everything he’s done for you. To you. He’s done this because you missed a date with him?

Well, fuck.

You’d meant to go on a date with him at some point before. When, you couldn’t remember. You knew you missed it but Hyungwon didn’t even text you to say he was going to meet you or anything. So you assumed that you both just… stood each other up.

What kind of guy reacts this way on purpose to someone missing a date? And when he was the one that cheated on you!

Hyungwon was crazy. He was a demon in his own right. He’s done all of this out of his own pocket. At least when you did this it was an accident and you backed out when you realised what it actually meant for Hyungwon. Because you’re not evil and a complete demon.

You’d almost miss Wonho doing what he promised to do for you because you were so perplexed with what happened.

“What if I give you my power?”

“What?”

“What!”

Both you and Kihyun have opposite responses. You’d not expected him to say something like this. Wonho rolls his eyes anyway. “Kihyun, I’ll sacrifice my position and all power I have if you forget the job.”

“You can’t do that, Hoseok,” you say. It comes with a staggered breath at the thought of losing him. “No. I won’t let you. You’re not doing.”

Kihyun clears his threat anyway, distracted Wonho from your pleas. “Yes. You’re not allowed to do that. You can’t.”

“No, I can,” Wonho interjects. He’s back in front of you so that you can’t decide your own fate and you know he won’t back down. “Kihyun. You’ll be the most powerful one of all of us if you take what power I have. You know that.”

Kihyun hums. “What makes you think I want it?”

“Because all you’ve ever wanted is power, Kihyun.”

And that’s what Wonho never wanted. So you know that he’d sacrifice it if he ever got the chance to.

Kihyun is considering it. He’s got a look on his face that shows you Wonho’s suggestion is going to make Kihyun’s cogs turn. It’s a worthy deal. Everything Wonho is offering can change Kihyun’s life, as well as yours.

“You can’t, Hoseok.“

Your beg doesn’t get through to him. Wonho is still facing Kihyun and trying to get the other male to back down but it’s not working. You can’t say anything that will change his mind.

"Hoseok,” you cry again. It comes with pain and Wonho must have heard it because he turns to you with wide eyes. “Please don’t.”

“Don’t what? I said I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

You’re the reason he’s doing this. That’s all that’s running through your mind as you try to tug on his hand. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t.”

“I will, Hoseok.”

“I’ll always be here,” Wonho says, “always. Don’t forget that. I said I would protect you and I will until the day you die.”

But this is all going so quickly for you. Only ten minutes ago the world was fine and you were happy. The forever you always wanted? It was beginning to come true and you were living in it but Hyungwon had ruined it for you and there was nothing that you could do. Just watch. Just live it out.

Because everything happens for a reason, and Kihyun agreeing that he wanted Hoseok’s power sends you into an internal meltdown.

\----

It’s been four days.

You haven’t left your house and you’ve had Minhyuk call in sick everyday for you despite not having a clue what is going on with you. All he knows is you’re sick. You’re too sick to move much more than when you’re going to the bathroom.

But you’re not sick. It’s far worse than that.

You’re heart broken.

Being sick was a lot easier than this, and you’d taken the worst cases of Salmonella over this feeling of hell ripping you apart. Wonho is gone and he’s not coming back, as much as he said he’d always be with you. You’re not an idiot. He’s gone.

“Hello?” Minhyuk calls, knocking on your door. “Are you okay? I haven’t heard you move today?”

Bless him, Minhyuk has been too kind. He’s been bringing you food and dealing with your more than shitty attitude that is in no way near what Wonho would want you to act. It’s your anger coming out because you’re mad.

At yourself, at Kihyun but primarily and Wonho for not listening to you.

The question was always lingering. Would you rather be dead so Wonho could still be here? Yes. There was still a chance that you would see him again.

You both could have been together in whatever kind of strange afterlife he lived in. You’d be fine with being immortal if you were both immortal together. But you told him you wouldn’t want to be and he remembered that.

Goddammit, Shin Hoseok. Why are you like this?

“I’m fine,” you call back.

“There’s someone here for you,” Minhyuk says.

You groan, pulling the cover further over your head. “I’m sick, Minhyuk. I can’t see them or they’ll get sick too. Just tell them to leave their number and I’ll text them later.”

Minhyuk is quiet for a moment. You’re sure you can hear him talking quietly but you dismiss the thought because you’re trying to drown out all excess noise with sad songs by whatever group you could find. Miracles in December always makes people emo.

You’re more than emo right now, and EXO’s sad songs aren’t making it for you.

“It’s important,” Minhyuk replies.

“But I’m sick, Minhyuk,” you tell him. You’re getting more annoyed that he won’t just accept you’re not going to leave you to your own business. “If it’s that important they can leave a number and I’ll get back to them.”

Minhyuk still doesn’t walk away. You’re a few moments from walking outside and telling him that you’re absolutely fine but he stops you again, this time with reason. “It’s Hoseok here to see you.”

“What?”

You question isn’t loud enough for Minhyuk to hear and it’s more of a statement at your own disbelief. You only know one Hoseok and it’s Shin Hoseok. No one else would even think to prank you with a name like that because they’d think it meant nothing to you.

But it certainly gets you out of bed and to the door that remained unopened for the majority of your life right now.

Staring you straight back in the face is Minhyuk, slightly concerned as to why you’re suddenly so active, and Shin Hoseok.

“Hoseok?”

He’s smiling so sweetly at you. It’s a sight you wished you’d never have to see because a twisting in your stomach tells you that it’s not real and you’re just lying to yourself. It’s a mirage. Wonho isn’t here with you. He can’t be.

No, it’s Hoseok. He’s with you.

“Sorry it took me so long to get here,” Hoseok says. He opens his arms a little wider for you and it takes a second to adjust to how different he looks. “I was stuck for a while sorting some stuff out. But I keep my promises, don’t I?”

He’s not the same as he was before. No, he’s wearing the whitest of jackets and tops and even jeans to go with them. His hair is darker like you imagined it to be when he was actually alive and he’s not so pale anymore. But when he smiles you feel the same as before. Your heart is flipping.

You can’t even bring yourself to say anything. Talking is too mundane for you and you can only throw yourself at Hoseok and check that he is real.

Oh, he’s so very real that you can feel him under all your nerves as you hold him tight and never let him go. Not again. You won’t let him go like that again. If he leaves you then you’ll…

“Don’t leave me, Hoseok.”

You can’t even finish your thoughts and that’s the very reason you don’t care in Minhyuk hears you. He can hear it, maybe then Hoseok wouldn’t leave and you could be stuck with him until the end of your own forever.

Hoseok wasn’t the demon you expected him to be. That was Hyungwon. Your fears for what Hoseok could be all become myths and you can move on. They are all myths. Hoseok isn’t a demon at all, he’s a human just like you and you’re sure now that the relationship between is as real as you could have wanted it to have been.

And these feelings? They’re mundane. They’re raw and you need Hoseok. He’s your own querencia now. 

“I won’t leave you,” he says. He’s holding you just as tight as you want him to. There are tears in your eyes that you can get rid of. “I promise you that I won’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> okay this is finally done… i hope you like it! the ending is a little naff because i wanted to get this done as a happy birthday to myself. it’s my first time writing about wonho but he’s my ult so i’m biased but i think it was okay… let me know if you like!


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